And now president Obama has delivered his locked-and-loaded twenty-three point Executive Order for curing violence in America. Breathless previews predicted the president would call for a 21st Amendment copycat.

Instead, Obama pledged to nominate an ATF Director, a position officially vacant but occupied by acting appointees since George W. Bush was in the White House. The One then ordered federal law enforcement to trace ownership of guns used in a crime -- no doubt inspired by "Handgun Crime Rules For Dummies". Twenty-one other air-pistol salutes followed. And he rested on the seventh day.

Obama's confectionery press conference had a whiff of artificial vanilla, not cordite. From somnolent to laughable: imagine primary care physicians seriously diverting time from filling out Medicare reimbursement forms to asking patients about their gun ownership. Another line of worthless inquiries such as "do you ever have fits of rage?" "Well, doc, only when watching or listening to Obama".

Relax, the 2nd Amendment isn't going anywhere. Despite the huffing and puffing, the strutting and strumming, the histrionics and hyperventilating, federal gun control legislation has as much chance as I have using a bolt action shotgun in knocking down a pheasant in flight. Ain't happenin', no way, no how. A cock gets to strut another day.

It's really simple -- the votes aren't there. Harry Reid knows it. John Boehner knows it, despite his frequent amnesia about where he tucked away his supply of first principles ointment.

Even the New York Times knows it, showing the NRA ratings of all U.S. Congressmen and Senators. 56% of the House are Grade A solidly pro-gun. And the Senate is just one vote short of the 60 supermajority for those graded A (46) and grade B (13).

The American people know it, as Rasmussen reports "65% See Gun Rights As Protection Against Tyranny". The vast majority don't need a phony adjunct Constitutional law lecturer instructing them on the 2nd Amendment. The 2nd Amendment flows from a self-evident natural right to use deadly force while protecting one's life, liberty, and property. The 2nd Amendment says such a right shall not be infringed -- it does not say such a right shall be infringed to reform society's ills, fix cultural defects, or save a man's soul.

Whether gun or ammo restrictions will be effective in reducing violence and mass murders is irrelevant to the 2nd Amendment. Gun ownership, because it is tangible, real, and when deployed deadly, is the single most transcendent protection against tyranny; more than words, more than due process, and more than the right to assemble and petition. In fact the 2nd Amendment is the guarantor, the glue that holds together and enables all of the rights that accrue to a republic of free people.

The real threats to the 2nd Amendment are practical munitions logjams, such as limited manufacturing capacity and tight access to primers and black powders. Declining numbers of people trained in the tool-and-die manufacturing trades with know-how for deep-drawn metal stamping of brass casings and jackets is far more perilous than Joe Biden's incoherent musings at a coffee shop or an Obama photo-op.

The "assault weapon" ban dialogue still hasn't passed the nomenclature literacy test. What is an "assault weapon" anyhow? Most pheasants I have encountered -- at long distance of course -- would agree the Mossberg 12 gauge bolt action shotgun in my hands assaulted little beyond my own self-esteem. However my Remington 1100 semi-auto 4 shot 12 gauge shotgun is a different story. How many mass murders have been carried out with a bayonet-fixed M1 carbine? Indeed shovels and pickaxes have a more gruesome history of deadly force.

This is not to dismiss gun related restrictions imposed state-by-state. The latest grandstanding has been led by New York's hysterical Gov. Andrew Cuomo, whose most spectacular accomplishment in office has been continued oversight for the Empire State's domestic migration outflow of nearly 3 million residents in the last twenty years, the highest in the nation. http://www.empirecenter.org/pb/2012/08/migration3081612.cfm

New York's latest gun restriction measure, passed on Tuesday, January 15, restricts ammo magazines to 7 rounds. I suppose that's a slippery-slope triumph of sorts, but is it really serious?

Unlike skills and materials needed to make or reload ammunition, gunsmiths with access to plastic molding technology, or simple metal bending fabricators easily found in any auto repair body-and-fender shop, will comfortably circumvent Cuomo's Blush and Bronzer victory.

And look for 30-shot magazines to be stuffed inside shipments of bootleg tax-free cigarettes routinely making the short trek from New Hampshire to the banks of Lake Champlain and the Hudson.

Marco Rubio got it right, on the heels of Obama's "Save The Children" mini-melodrama, when he said to Bill O'Reilly "If he doesn't want it [the 2nd Amendment] in the Constitution or he wants to reform the Second Amendment, then have the guts to admit that."

Well, no guts is no surprise coming from a president hiding behind a gaggle of little kids and a harem of cabinet appointees -- Susan Rice, Hillary Clinton, Kathleen Sibelius, and Lisa Jackson -- all doing his dirty work.

Carrie Nation and the Temperance League -- the Anti-Saloon league -- leveraged decades of activism and pietistic Protestant agitation and rode upon advancing waves of Prohibition sentiments with deep roots in the great religious revivals of the 19th century. Yet even the 18th Amendment didn't prohibit private manufacture or consumption and its folly was revealed soon enough.

The majority of Americans have been bullied and acquiesced into accepting and paying for a welfare state, the most pernicious threat to this Republic. But it's one thing to surrender your wallet -- and we will soon come to know John Marshall's axiom "the power to tax is the power to destroy" -- another matter entirely to surrender your life and liberty.

Obama's plea for unilateral disarmament is nothing more than a finger-wagging reprise of the Methodists' "Little Temperance League", a tiresome nag scolding us against the concurrent temptations of card playing and dancing,

The 2nd Amendment isn't going anywhere. Ain't happenin', no way, no how.